The New York Police Department’s leadership is targeting a familiar foe as being responsible for the city’s uptick in crime.
NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said the nationwide movement to strip funding from law enforcement contributed to the shooting death of a 71-year-old Florida tourist in New York City Thursday. The subsequent silence from those who support “defund the police” initiatives is “deafening,” Shea said.
“Whether it is a legislator that refuses to fix broken laws or those that were tweeting ‘abolish the police,’ you own this,” Shea told Fox5 NY Friday. “They need to step up and make the fixes that New Yorkers deserve.”
PORTLAND AND OTHER ‘DEFUND’ CITIES ARE DESTROYING THEIR OWN LIVABILITY
The commissioner said the effort to defund police departments nationwide in recent months has prevented officers from doing their job to the fullest, and NYPD officer retirements surged last year after the city slashed $1 billion from the department’s budget.
“Literally, every night, I’m hearing from New Yorkers across the city saying the same thing: We need more police,” Shea said.
Shea isn’t alone in calling for a heightened police presence amid the increase in crime.
“We demand more police officers on the street. We demand them to arrest kids — to put them in jail,” said Eve Hendricks, whose 17-year-old was killed in June 2020. “If you are big enough to pull a trigger, you are big enough to serve the time.”
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Nearly half of adults believe police spending should be increased, according to a poll of 11,505 adults between Sept. 13 and Sept. 19, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 1.6 percentage points released earlier this week. The share of the public who want increased spending is up from 31% in June 2020, signaling a significant shift in the national attitude toward policing.
Shea did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
